Goblin Attack Force and Zombyra the Dark served largely the same purpose which was to establish a high attack threat on the board, protecting a player from being able to be overcome by standard 1900 ATK monsters or weaker tribute monsters such as Airknight Parshath and Vampire Lord. Hayabusa Knight was largely useful for putting out damage through its multiple attacks and was often combined with a powerful Equip Spell such as United We Stand or Mage Power. The popularity of Magician of Faith and Mystic Tomato at the time made this particularly useful. Sasuke Samurai had the ability to destroy face-down Defense Position monsters without flipping them or performing damage calculation. All of these monsters served different purposes and could be searched easily with Reinforcement of the Army. These included Sasuke Samurai, Hayabusa Knight, Goblin Attack Force, Zombyra the Dark, and Don Zaloog. This, combined with the wide variety of different effects that even early Warrior monsters offered, made this a great card that could be integrated into any deck that wanted to run a Warrior engine.īeyond these three essential cards, there were a variety of different Warrior monsters that served as the “tools” of the deck. At this point, the only other major searchers were monsters such as Sangan and Mystic Tomato which were most often activated by being destroyed by battle. By providing search power in the form of a spell, it gave utility that nothing else at the time did: instant access to key combo pieces and important cards. While it didn't see massive usage at the time of its release, it was a truly revolutionary card. Although he would fall off in usage in later iterations of the deck, Marauding Captain's ability to Special Summon a monster at a time when Special Summoning was uncommon landed it at Semi-Limited in an early Limited List.įinally there was Reinforcement of the Army. He also gave essential protection from battle if used with other Warrior monsters, cementing his spot as the central piece in dedicated Warrior decks. Furthermore, Marauding Captain’s effect could be used to summon any other monster, giving it synergy with the various different staple monsters that saw play at the time such as Gemini Elf, Tribe Infecting Virus, and Sangan. By allowing a Special Summon, it gave a distinct advantage in field presence that other cards at the time could not properly match. Marauding Captain was also an extremely vital card to the early Warrior deck’s strategy. The only other truly comparable card at the time was Tribute to the Doomed, which required its user to discard a card, meaning that the user ended up with a net -1 in card advantage. The card's strength came from its targeted destruction at the cost of only one card. Exiled Force was definitely the most used out of these three, seeing play as a staple monster in almost all decks for years to come. The most important Warriors were all released in Legacy of Darkness: Marauding Captain, Exiled Force, and Reinforcement of the Army. This was largely due to the elimination of the most overwhelmingly powerful cards from the competitive game in combination with the release of further warrior support.Īlthough not all of the early Warrior cards saw competitive use, they're important to go over regardless. Warrior decks wouldn't truly take off until the meta had flattened more by the time of Goat Format and later. However, because of the overwhelming power of decks like Hand Control and Chaos Control, Warriors were never able to make a significant foothold in the higher levels of the competitive meta. This caused the Warrior deck to gain significant traction at the locals level.
These core cards worked to complement the already wide selection of different and diverse Warrior-type monsters that were available at the time. This set introduced two cards that would go on to form the core of Warrior decks for years to come: Exiled Force and Reinforcement of the Army.
Warriors have existed since the game’s inception, but they didn’t get powerful support until 2003 with the Legacy of Darkness booster set. That title goes to one of the biggest fan favorite decks of the classic era of Yu-Gi-Oh!: Warriors.
However, it was definitely not the first Type-based deck to see widespread play overall. As we discussed last time, Zombies was the first truly meta deck with a focused Type-based theme.
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